The magazine has 30 000 readers, serving a market that has grown rapidly in recent years for women who wear the hijab (headscarf) but want to dress fashionably, with colour and style. It reflects the way a new, female middle class has emerged in Turkey, less worried about being socially accepted and more comfortable sharing public spaces with secularists.
Ala sets trends for the roughly 500 ‘conservative fashion’ companies, a multi-billion-dollar industry where modest dress no longer means just ‘pardessus’ tunics but includes colours, glossy magazines and high street ‘hijabi fashion’ stores.
But Ala has its female critics who feel it’s promoting consumerism and, by revealing ‘feminine curves,’ is immodest and ‘portrays women as sexual objects’.
Cover Story screens on Al Jazeera World on Saturday, 9 May at 20:00.
Watch the promo here.
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